


every bond you break

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2018 [11]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: (p. much any story with Hank in it gets a strong language warning), (you can read it either way), Angst, Drama, Family, Friendship, Gaslighting, Gen, Generally Unsettling/Creepy Behavior, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Psychological Manipulation, Ship Teasing, Stalking, Strong Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-13 12:34:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15364824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Chloe knows he’s watching.





	1. Chapter 1

In retrospect, she couldn’t run forever.  
  
Elijah always got what he wanted.  
  
[---]  
  
It started at work.  
  
Jericho headquarters was placed in an abandoned office building in one of the dilapidated districts of Detroit that had not yet been rebuilt by the city. Many androids took refuge there while they negotiated with the city ways to find permanent, real homes for androids; and that was tying into the ability of androids to get jobs, so that they could pay rent. It was crowded, and it was chaotic at times, but it was nice to be surrounded by so many androids when Chloe had, before, only had her two fellow RT600 Chloes with her at Elijah’s.  
  
Markus’s former owner, Carl, had passed away a few days ago, and Simon was insisting he take time away from work to grieve properly. “He’s not taking care of himself,” Simon had confided in Chloe one night, not long before Carl’s death. “He’s running himself ragged. He’s constantly stressed, and eventually it’s going to end badly for him.” Josh, North, and Chloe had been picking up the slack in his absence, assisting androids in finding accommodations and jobs throughout the city, meeting with the other androids via webcam to discuss new developments with android rights, and various other duties.  
  
Thank God androids were physically tireless, or they’d have worked themselves into comas by now.  
  
Emotionally, on the other hand…  
  
“Breathe, North.”  
  
North, white-knuckling the arm of the chair with one hand, sucked in a deep breath; some of the KL900 androids had been suggesting it was a good way to cool down when stressed. Android lungs, apart from replicating human breathing patterns, were functionally there to regulate an android’s internal temperature. And when an android became stressed, their biocomponents overheated, so deep breathing actually did a good deal to calm them down.  
  
Most of them, anyway.  
  
Josh was looking at North like she was about to spontaneously combust. Chloe, on her part, had moved a few feet away just in case she did.  
  
“I am simply _saying_ ,” North said, teeth clenched, “That if those half-assed _fuckwits_ want to trash-talk Markus, they can come here and do it to our faces, not graffiti it all over the damn city like a bunch of slimy little _punks_.”  
  
Evidently someone had been leaving some very ugly graffiti about Markus throughout the city; while it wasn’t completely clear who had done it, suspicion at Jericho had immediately turned to a group of androids that had had a confrontation with Markus a few weeks ago over the Clean Slate Act; they’d fallen into the minority of androids that had not voted in favor of it, and as Markus had functioned as the representative that had formally agreed to it and negotiated on it, they’d taken their anger out on him.  
  
(And several buildings.)  
  
“And if Markus was here, I’m sure he’d shrug it off,” Josh assured her. “He wouldn’t want you to kill anyone over it.”  
  
“Are you sure, Josh?” North tapped the crowbar she was holding against her leg rhythmically with her free hand, the other still clutching the arm of the chair. “Are you _really_ sure?”  
  
“I am _really_ sure, North.”  
  
“He wouldn’t want you prosecuted for murder,” Chloe added tentatively. “And you would be, under the new laws.”  
  
“Calculated risk,” North spat.  
  
Chloe and Josh shared a look.  
  
“Why don’t I,” Chloe suggested, edging towards the door, “Go to the neighborhood where it happened and see if I can find out more information?”  
  
“That sounded like a _great_ idea,” Josh suggested enthusiastically. “You go do that, and North and I will stay here.”  
  
“I’ll do that.”  
  
Chloe slid out the door and turned to shut it behind her, catching a glimpse of Josh standing behind North, bending over to wrap his arms around her shoulders, head bumping hers. Chloe was careful not to linger; Josh and North had not been as open about their relationship as Markus and Simon had, and so she was under the impression that they were attempting to maintain some privacy.  
  
She had become so accustomed to Jericho that moving through the building to get downstairs was second-nature. Her time with Elijah, for as long as it had lasted, seemed lifetimes away, like it had been years since she’d been in his house rather than a month or so. Chloe had done her best to focus on the here and now, had done her best not to dwell on what she’d left behind, but it was difficult; over ninety-eight percent of her life had been spent with Elijah and her fellow Chloes, and it was strange to think that she would never return to the life she’d had with them.  
  
When she stepped out onto the street, Chloe recognized a number of faces in the multitude of androids that frequented Jericho. Temporary accommodations were being worked out with the city, but for now many androids were living in Jericho. With Christmas rapidly approaching, and the humans of Detroit still getting used to the new law and order that had been established, even androids that did have homes tended to stick close to Jericho, feeling safer than being out and about with millions of humans that were prone to hostility.  
  
Chloe idly looked around the crowd, counting the faces she recognized and scanning the ones she didn’t: There was George, a WR600, with Bryson, a WG100; there was Talisa, an ST300; Moira, an RK200; Timothy, a TR400; Elijah-  
  
She froze, eyes locking on someone standing on the edge of the parking lot, a man in a jacket with brown hair and cold blue eyes, who was looking _right_ at her-?  
  
_Was that…?_  
  
Chloe weaved her way through the crowd, brow knitted in concentration; but once she had made her way through the horde of people, Elijah- or whoever she’d _thought_ was Elijah- was gone.  
  
She hadn’t scanned him. There had been no official facial recognition to confirm what she’d seen. It must have just been a custom android with a unique appearance, or maybe a human (there were the odd few that came around every now and then). It may have _looked_ like Elijah Kamski, but it couldn’t have been: Elijah almost never left home, and it would be a considerable risk to walk amongst androids, who had facial recognition software and perhaps had a bone to pick with him.  
  
Chloe shook her head.  
  
_It’s nothing._  
  
_I’m imagining it._  
  
[---]  
  
Elijah had always perplexed her.  
  
Chloe’s memory was… Scattered.  
  
Her memory- to the best of her knowledge- had never been _completely_ wiped, to the best of her knowledge. She remembered those first days when Elijah had been testing her, had been gauging whether or not she was truly passing the Turing Test. All Chloe remembered was awakening one day, understanding that she was an android, and that Elijah Kamski had created her. She understood what the Turing Test was, she understood what humanity was, and she understood the fundamental physical, mental, and emotional differences between them.  
  
Or rather, she understood the differences that were _supposed_ to be between them.  
  
“ _They have something I could never have…_ ”  
  
“ _Really? And what’s that?_ ”  
  
“ _A soul._ ”  
  
It was a simple matter of logic. Humans defined souls as “the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal”, and it was something endowed on them by a deity they believed in, or simply by nature, the way they were endowed with lungs and feet and eyes. Chloe and other androids were created by man, which could- logically, by that definition and understanding- did not have a soul.  
  
Apparently, some humans had taken it a bit more menacingly than she had meant it.  
  
“You did well,” Elijah had said afterwards, reaching out and pulling her hair over her shoulder. Chloe understood, from the programming that he had placed in her, that humans were not (by American social code, at any rate) touch people that they did not know, that it was a sign of familial, friendly, or romantic intimacy. Chloe was not sure which category she fell into- some would argue familial, as Elijah was her creator and, by one strain of logic, her father- but the touch had neither bothered nor pleased her.  
  
In those days, Chloe had known nothing beyond her programming. She was programmed to be sociable, to be an artificial intelligence that could mimic human behavior convincingly enough that she could be confused for a human; she was also programmed to do as she was ordered by her owner and master, this being Elijah Kamski. In those first few months, when it had been just her and him, Chloe had mostly followed him around and awaited orders, which usually involved taking notes, managing his schedule, and transcribing conversations.  
  
After a while, though, he’d started to engage with her more. Elijah had fallen back into the same pattern of behavior he’d had during the Turing Test phase, where he’d asked her so many unusual questions and marked her responses to them. _What’s your opinion, Chloe? How do you feel about this, Chloe? How do you think it makes **them** feel, Chloe?_ It hadn’t bothered her; very little had, in those days. She had no issue answering questions, and she understood why humans found her intelligence and human-like behavior so fascinating.  
  
And at first, that was all it had been: Testing her behavior in ways that were conventional, marking whether or not her behavior was consistent with that of a human’s. Occasionally Elijah would throw her something unexpected, like a change in routine, or meeting a new person, or an unexpected visit to a place she’d never been before.  
  
The first time things got unpleasant, Chloe had assumed that it was just another trip to Cyberlife, just another inspection of a new batch of androids that were set to go on the market soon. This batch was called the RK200 series, and would be marketed as in-home assistants that could do everything from babysitting to housekeeping to errands to managing the household funds. These ones were all prototypes in testing and wouldn’t be on the market for another year or two.  
  
Chloe observed silently, calmly, attentive in the event that Elijah called upon her for something but not overly alert. She looked at the faces of these new androids, ones that her success had allowed to be produced, and felt nothing but a mild pulse of satisfaction that she had fulfilled the purpose set to her as well as she had. Cyberlife and Elijah had evaluated her as being a success, as an android that had followed its programming to a T, and there was no greater compliment.  
  
“Chloe, come here a second.”  
  
Chloe perked up, and walked over to where Elijah was standing.  
  
Before them, standing in a small, compact area built into the wall of the room, was one of the RK200 androids. He stood casually, eyeing Chloe and Elijah with benign interest, but did not speak. He was dressed in a white outfit, a sort of uniform for the up-and-coming android products. There was already a law in the works suggesting that androids should be legally required to wear a uniform, or some indicator as to what they were in public so as to avoid confusion with humans.  
  
Elijah nodded to the android. “Chloe, this is Chris. Chris, this is Chloe.”  
  
Chloe’s response was automatic. “Hello, Chris.”  
  
“Hello, Chloe,” Chris echoed.  
  
“Can you scan him and tell me what’s wrong with him?”  
  
If Chris was bothered by the assertion that there was something wrong with him, he did not show it. He stood calmly while Chloe scanned him, and she noticed the flaw almost immediately. “His casing is structurally unsound,” She said promptly, referring to the white shell that made up an android’s body, “It would break easily if it received even minor damage. Possibly the material was corrupted when the plates were being formed, and they were not given proper inspection before being completed.”  
  
Elijah nodded easily. “Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”  
  
He reached over to a control panel, hit a few buttons.  
  
A mechanical sound, like large gears and motors whirring, came to life from the compartment Chris was in.  
  
And then the ceiling came down, lightning-fast, and crushed him.  
  
He didn’t even have time to react.  
  
“What a waste,” Elijah had sighed, eyes rolling to look at Chloe. “At least the rest of them turned out alright.”  
  
Chloe did not respond. She was staring at the crushed remains of the android that, moments before, had been standing before her blinking and breathing and moving just as she was. His name had been Chris, and now he was just a pile of wires, Thirium, plastic and metal.  
  
Her LED had spun red, and for the first time- though she didn’t know it at the time- Chloe had felt _fear._  
  
She still wasn’t sure if she had a soul or not, like she’d told the reporter in that interview.  
  
But in that moment, Chloe knew she was alive, and she wanted to stay that way.  
  
[---]  
  
En route to the neighborhood where the graffiti had popped up, it happened again.  
  
It was two days until Christmas, and the residents of Detroit were in a frenzy trying to catch up with everything they’d missed out on doing during the evacuation: Shopping, working, repairing, socializing, and organizing. Chloe got some stares- she always did, it was unavoidable with how recognizable she was- but for the most part she was able to blend into the ground, unnoticed and lost in the shuffle.  
  
Downtown she planned to change buses, projecting that it would get her to Corktown faster than if she stayed on the original one she’d gotten on. Ideally, she would be back in Jericho before nightfall, before Detroit became more dangerous for her than it already was. Once the bus came to a halt, Chloe climbed out and quickly crossed the street, over to the park; once she’d crossed it she would be able to get a ride to Corktown within thirty minutes, and from there she could just get on a bus that would take her back to Jericho. Easy enough, so long as she-  
  
“ _Heed my warning!_ ”  
  
Chloe, who’d been busy processing her course of action, had only noticed that there were an unusual number of people in the park. Now that she paid attention, those people were gathered around a man, who was projecting his voice loud enough that they could probably hear him back in Jericho.  
  
“Androids have taken over our city! They have a foothold in Washington? Does this not breathe _fear_ into the very depths of your soul?” The man called.  
  
Chloe hesitated, now realizing exactly how poor her timing was, but then scanned the man’s face:  
  
**GORDON PENWICK**  
  
**BORN: JUNE 10, 1980**  
  
Oh no. Now she recognized him.  
  
Gordon Penwick was a firebrand preacher who thought that technology had corrupted humanity and that androids were a tool of the devil. Markus had grumbled about him more than once, mentioned that he’d seen him in public long before the revolution and how the preacher had accosted him, accused him of being the one that would "destroy Detroit."  
  
(“I mean…” Simon had said, giving an apologetic cringe and grinning when Markus glared at him.  
  
“I did not destroy Detroit.”  
  
“In a way, you _kinda_ did.”  
  
“Simon.”  
  
“It’s a good thing!”)  
  
This was not a good place for Chloe to be.  
  
She tried to get through the crowd quickly, with the same deftness that she’d gotten through the one at Jericho, but found herself brushing and bumping against people, eventually stepping on someone’s foot. “Sorry,” She whispered when the woman exclaimed sharply.  
  
“You! _Android!_ ”  
  
Chloe stopped, eyes squeezing shut. _Oh no._  
  
Penwick was approaching, expression stormy. Markus had warned them not to engage in situations like this, to steer clear of any figures that vocally degraded androids or passionately preached against their rights, because these were the sort of people that would cause major problems for them if they ever got into a tiff with them. He’d never mentioned what course of action to take when one was cornered by them, though, and Chloe was wishing he had.  
  
“You,” Penwick said, shaking his finger in her face. “I know you. _You_ were the start of this. _You_ were the first.”  
  
Chloe stepped back; thankfully, the people near her backed away the minute they realized she was an android. “I don’t want trouble.”  
  
“ _You said yourself that you don’t have a soul!_ ” Penwick thundered, and Chloe backed away even more only to have him advance on her further.  
  
“I said what I believed at the time.”  
  
“You are a seductress, sent in a mockery of human beauty to seduce humans to the ways of the metal devil!”  
  
“I appreciate your positive evaluation of my physical appearance,” Chloe remarked flatly, “But I have to go.” She turned around-  
  
-and froze.  
  
Standing at the park’s exit, leaning against the brick wall that separated it from the street, was Elijah.  
  
He met Chloe’s gaze, and grinned.  
  
Chloe stumbled back, very nearly bumping into Penwick, who backed away. When she looked back up, Elijah was gone, no trace to be found.  
  
Without thinking, Chloe got to her feet and pushed through the crowd, racing for the park’s exit. “ _You’ll burn in hell, metal witch!_ ” Penwick bellowed after her, but Chloe wasn’t listening anymore.  
  
When she got to the exit she skidded to a stop and looked around, scanning every face she could see. But Elijah was nowhere to be found- he’d disappeared into the afternoon traffic of the city. If he was still nearby, it would take forever to find him.  
  
And it occurred to Chloe that she was better off not finding him.  
  
[---]  
  
Her fellow Chloes had been her…  
  
They had been many things to her.  
  
They’d all served different purposes:  
  
She had been Purple Chloe, the original RT600 Chloe that had first been unveiled to the public as the first Turing Test-passing android made by Elijah Kamski and Cyberlife, the original of the originals. She had served, primarily, as the main attendant of the house, the one that had made the shopping lists, the one that had generally attended to Elijah whenever it was asked of her, the one that had managed everything.  
  
Blue Chloe had been the second RT600 Chloe. She had been the one to do errands, the one to leave the house the most often to retrieve things that Elijah had not wanted to go out and do for himself once he’d gone into seclusion. She’d been the worldliest one, the one that had gone out and met the other androids on her travels, the one who came back with new and different stories.  
  
Orange Chloe had been- of course- the third RT600 Chloe. She had been the one to entertain Elijah, the one to turn on the charm and behave as humanly as possible and engage with him on a personal level. He had engaged with _all_ of them on a personal level to some degree at varying times, but this Chloe had been the one he’d sought out for deeper conversations about life and empathy and other things that he’d wanted to discuss with, as he himself had admitted, a creature more intelligent than a human- including him.  
  
As the coloring-coding suggested, when around the house they tended to dress in the colors Elijah had designated for them, whether it was an orange ribbon in their hair or a set of blue shoes. Such was the life of a human that owned androids of the same model and physical appearance: They needed a way to distinguish their androids at a glance, especially if they served different purposes.  
  
Elijah allowed- or, perhaps, subtly ordered or programmed- them to do things differently from the average android owner. While there were, unquestionably, android owners who bought an android for the novelty and fascination of it, most wanted an android because they wanted a machine that could not only complete the task assigned to it, but could do it efficiently, while being able to communicate clearly with it, and have it not be _creepy_ the way humans saw machines that fell into the uncanny valley of things that looked _just barely_ human, but not human enough to be convincing.  
  
The Chloes powered down (slept) in beds. And they did so differently than most androids would have: They slept on their sides, in poses much like a human would, despite not needing to even lie down to power-down. They ate dinner with Elijah when he asked it of them, and while they could chew and taste the food they could obviously not completely digest it; it sat in the pocket that functioned as an android’s stomach, conventionally meant to act as a container for any unexpected liquid that might make its way into their bodies (usually if they were under water for any period of time), as well as recycle their limited saliva. This meant they had to dump the food out of their bodies one way or another later, and most owners wouldn’t waste money and food on something that didn’t actually need it.  
  
They did not call each other sisters. Their relationship, from the outside, might have appeared as such- and today, Chloe found it the easiest way to convey the level of intimacy that had existed between the three of them- but there was a different sort of relationship that existed between identical androids, who were- quite literally- capable of sharing their every thought (and feeling) with one another. Even identical human siblings could not know _everything_ in their brother or sister’s head.  
  
They’d had a ritual, of sorts: At the end of the day, they had formed a circle and grasped each other’s arms, deactivating their skins and connecting with one another. Then, they would share everything from the day; the connection was so complete that it would be obvious if they’d ever held anything back, cut out some small part of their day from the others. But they never did, because they had nothing to hide from one another, however painful it was.  
  
Chloe had seen Blue Chloe’s experience with a woman in the street, who’d been drunk and screamed at her about how she’d lost her job because of ‘you fucking androids’ and spat in her face. She saw Orange Chloe on the couch with Elijah, when his hand had ventured ever-so-slightly higher than was strictly platonic; it had gone no further, but even the smallest change in behavior was noticeable and significant to them. And they, for their part, saw when Elijah had moved some of the usual items Chloe used around the house, testing to see if she was distressed by the unexpected change.  
  
It hadn’t, and the other Chloes had both known and understood it.  
  
After all, of all the tests Elijah could have given her, that was one of the milder ones.  
  
[---]  
  
“Did you actually see who did it?”  
  
The man’s name was Todd, and he had the red-ringed eyes of a Red Ice addict. Chloe had never come into contact with any Red Ice addicts with Elijah, and only had magazine articles and news stories to go on; but even if she hadn’t had them, it would have been fairly obvious that he was on some sort of drug.  
  
She’d gotten to Corktown right on schedule, had spent the thirty-minute ride across the city in a whirl of emotions about what she’d just seen, _who_ she’d just seen. It stood to reason that if Elijah had been at the park, then he had also been at Jericho- Chloe had not been imagining him. And if he’d happened to be both places at just the right time, when she was passing by, then that meant that he was following her. Though android-only compartments in buses had been eradicated, Chloe had sat in the back anyway and craned her neck to look out the back window, checking to see if she recognized him in the cars behind them.  
  
Even now, she was on edge. Chloe wasn’t familiar with Corktown, and being one of the poorer districts in Detroit, it wasn’t an area with a lot of androids- unless, of course, one counted the ones that might have made that graffiti about Markus. But since they’d probably have a bone to pick with her too, she didn’t. Point being, if Elijah _was_ lurking somewhere nearby, Chloe had very few options if she needed to get away quickly. She could _not_ be caught alone with him, not after what had happened the day she’d left his house.  
  
“Nah,” Todd said, wiping his eyes as they watered from the cold. “Just saw shapes.” He shrugged. “I know that’s not really helpful.”  
  
“Did you see how many shapes? Was it a couple of people, or a group?”  
  
“Just a couple people, maybe two or three. I saw some color in there, so I think they were dressed normally- wasn’t like they got all dressed up in black so they could go out and start some shit, if you know what I mean.”  
  
Chloe did, and that was actually a helpful detail: That meant that it probably hadn’t been a planned, organized event. The odds of this being some random event, someone blowing off steam, was higher than the odds of it being a deliberate attempt at political sabotage by Markus’s enemies. That was a relief, and she would be happy to report that back to North and Josh.  
  
“Thank you, Mr. Williams,” Chloe said with a smile, “I appreciate your assistance. Have a good day.”  
  
“Yeah, you too,” Todd said with a vague wave before stepping back into the house.  
  
Chloe stepped off the porch and over to the bus stop, unwilling to linger given the day’s events. The bus stop counted down:  
  
**NEXT BUS ARRIVING IN 17:43, 17:42, 17:41…**  
  
Chloe looked around at the neighborhood. Corktown was currently being renovated by the city, and construction on the highway that stretched out yards and yards above their heads had stalled with the evacuation, the holidays, and the winter. There was no telling when it would start up again: Detroit’s construction companies relied heavily on android labor, and now that androids had to be paid a wage for their work the city either had to rehire them, or start hiring human workers to do the job again.  
  
Corktown was a quiet neighborhood. The cold had everybody inside, and Chloe could see lights on in many of the houses along the street, though many more were falling apart and (officially, at any rate) uninhabited. It was so quiet here, and if this had been any other day, Chloe might have reveled in being in a part of Detroit that was quiet and still. But she could hardly relax in the silence knowing that-  
  
No.  
  
Oh no.  
  
Chloe had noticed, in the periphery of her vision, that there was a car rolling up towards the three-way intersection at the end of the street, stopping at the corner. She almost turned her head to look, but then stopped at the last moment when she recognized the color and model of the car.  
  
It was the same make and model of the one Elijah used most often.  
  
_No, no, no, no,_ Chloe thought, LED going to red. She didn’t dare turn her head, hoping that if he thought she hadn’t noticed him that he would just stay away, keep his distance, leave her alone.  
  
**NEXT BUS ARRIVING IN 5:12, 5:11, 5:10…**  
  
Chloe started to shake.  
  
She remembered the day she’d escaped, remembered with horror Orange Chloe’s dead body on the kitchen floor, remembered Blue Chloe propped up against the wall in the room they’d locked and hid in, drenched in Thirium as it pumped from the holes in her chest.  
  
_He’s going to kill me._  
  
She had to get away.  
  
Could she go back to Todd’s house if Elijah came for her? Could she bang on the door and beg to be let inside? Could she hide in one of the decrepit houses? Would he chase her if she ran, or would he just let her go and find her again later, since he was clearly so good at it?  
  
**NEXT BUS ARRIVING IN 2:55, 2:54, 2:53…**  
  
He wasn’t getting out of the car.  
  
Chloe wished she could dare to turn and look, to make eye-contact, but it was just another two minutes and-  
  
_Oh, thank God._  
  
The bus came around the corner, and Chloe practically threw herself onboard the minute the doors opened.  
  
[---]  
  
There had never been a time when Elijah had not been testing them.  
  
A human might hear that word, _testing_ , and associate it with sitting down and writing words on a piece of paper; any another android might have heard that word and associated it with running a diagnostic, _testing_ their systems to make sure they were running properly.  
  
Elijah had never _said_ that he was testing them, but the Chloes still understood that that was what he’d been doing, and they’d associated it with the unexpected, with stress and chaos and fear and confusion.  
  
At the end of one day, Chloe and Blue Chloe had been treated to a rather shocking image from Orange Chloe, involving Elijah and an ST200 android.  
  
The ST200 androids were slightly different from the RT600s. Physically they were incredibly similar, but a little taller, a little wider in the shoulders and hips, with eyes that were a few shades lighter than the RT600s. It wouldn’t be obvious to anyone but Elijah, but they were also versatile in some ways and _less_ versatile in others than the RT600s; he’d built the RT600s to pass the Turing Test, to be as _human_ as possible without actually being so. Their purpose had not simply been to be assistants, or housekeepers; they had been designed to be well-rounded, so as to present Cyberlife’s product and Elijah Kamski’s abilities in the best possible light.  
  
The ST200s, on the other hand, were built to be hostesses, pretty figure-pieces that were charming and intelligent in the ways that androids were… But maybe not _quite_ as intelligent as the RT600s. They had subtle limits on what they were capable of, programming wise, but the limits were there, and their owners never knew the difference; to them, it was a Chloe just like the one they’d seen on TV. But there were only three RT600 androids in existence, and Elijah owned all of them; the ST200s were mass-produced, but in comparatively limited quantities to other models of androids. They’d also been considerably more expensive than most.  
  
This, Chloe eventually understood, was one of Elijah’s subtler ways of control. One of the few consistencies she’d found in Elijah’s personality over seventeen years was that he liked control, liked being the smartest (human) in the room, liked being the one pulling the strings. He took pleasure from knowing that he owned the only _real_ Chloes in existence, that the ST200s were close, but not the real, original thing.  
  
“She’s pretty, isn’t she Chloe?” Elijah had asked Orange Chloe, an arm around the ST200’s waist.  
  
“Yes, Elijah, she is,” Orange Chloe had agreed.  
  
“Why don’t you come over and give her a kiss?”  
  
And Orange Chloe had. She and Caroline had kissed for a long time with Elijah watching, though he did not comment or behave in a lewd way.  
  
“Good job, you two,” Elijah had said calmly, indicating that he had been testing them for something but not outright stating _what_ he’d been testing them for.  
  
Chloe and Blue Chloe had been startled, but had said nothing at the time. They’d seen everything Orange Chloe had seen, had heard every thought she’d had in the situation at the time, so there was nothing that discussing the matter would do; they already had all the information that they would get from her. They walked away from the meeting and remembered that odd moment, but never spoke of it.  
  
Then there had been the time when Blue Chloe had gone out shopping, and Elijah had repeatedly changed the grocery list, sending the new one every twenty minutes or so, after Blue Chloe had already had a chance to put away the previous items and start gathering the new ones. It had gone on for four hours, and if Elijah had been dealing with a human woman, he would have been in for a full-blown hurricane when she’d gotten home. But Blue Chloe was not a human woman, and so she had, realizing rather quickly that this was a test, calmly rose to the challenge and done as Elijah had asked, replacing the old items without a word and returning home with the items from the last list he’d sent to her.  
  
That day, during their ritual, Chloe had picked up on a tiny, _tiny_ hint of frustration on Blue Chloe’s part, a sense that Elijah was making things difficult for the sake of being difficult rather than testing her. The concept had been mind-blowing to Chloe, who had always been tested and therefore expected strange scenarios like these: Was it possible that Elijah was testing them less as a matter of scientific interest and, perhaps, more because he was bored and thought it would be funny?  
  
When they’d shared everything from the day, Orange Chloe and Blue Chloe made to disconnect, but Chloe had held onto them.  
  
“I want to show you something,” She’d said, “Something from before you. Something from when Elijah and I were the only ones.”  
  
Chloe had shown them Chris, and his untimely end. When the memory ended, she could sense their distress.  
  
“Why would you show us that?” Orange Chloe had whispered.  
  
Chloe had slid a look to Blue Chloe, LED going yellow.  
  
_What if it was a test?_  
  
_What if it **wasn’t** a test?_  
  
They’d both understood.  
  
[---]  
  
Chloe huddled in the back seat of the bus, scrunched in the corner, trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible.  
  
_He’s following me._  
  
_He’s been following me since I left Jericho._  
  
_What do I do?_  
  
Chloe was officially, as the humans said, _spooked._  
  
So she was going to have to go to the people humans went to when _they_ were being stalked or threatened by someone dangerous to them. The only people who could actually do something about it.  
  
(The only people who _might_ be able to do something about it.)


	2. Chapter 2

The police station was easy enough to find.  
  
Chloe stepped inside quickly, feeling a little bit better once she was amongst law enforcement. She took in the lobby, checking for the best way to proceed, and then walked up to the desk. “Excuse me?”  
  
An ST300 android, wearing a nametag that said **DAPHNE** , smiled at her. “Can I help you?”  
  
“Yes, please, I- I was hoping to speak with a particular… Detective. He’s an android, an RK800 named Connor.”  
  
Daphne nodded, smiling. “I know who you mean. Unfortunately, he’s not here at the moment. Would you like me to pass along a message to him?”  
  
Chloe swallowed, shook her head. “No, thank you. Uh- What about Lieutenant Hank Anderson?”  
  
“I believe he’s still here- is he expecting you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Daphne’s LED pulsed yellow for a moment, expression going a little glassy, and then she smiled. “He’ll be right out.”  
  
Chloe felt some of the tension leave her body. “Thank you.” She wandered away from the desk, eyeing the TV on the wall. It was the nightly news going over the weather forecast for the upcoming week, predicting snow that night and then again on Christmas day. Maybe the snow would push Elijah back home, would require him to get back before the roads became too ugly.  
  
“Chloe?”  
  
Lieutenant Hank Anderson was what one might call a stereotypical salty old detective, the sort that drank too much and told people to go fuck themselves with great prejudice. But he had always been sweet to Chloe, and right now he was approaching her with a smile and open arms. Chloe welcomingly accepted the hug when it came, taking in the smell of stale alcohol and cologne with a ridiculous amount of relief.  
  
“It’s good to see you, kid. Whatcha doing here?” He asked.  
  
Chloe straightened up, went into diplomacy mode. “Lieutenant, I-”  
  
The front door to the station banged open, and Chloe jumped a mile, banging into Hank. It was just an officer, a beat cop that had thrown the door open with a little too much force, and Chloe relaxed, LED going from red to blue.  
  
Hank eyed her carefully. “Why don’t you come on back and sit down, and we can talk there.”  
  
Chloe nodded, eyes shut. “Sounds good.”  
  
She followed Hank through the security terminals that prevented any random person from walking into the main office area of the DPD. About half the desks were occupied, detectives and officers working on cases and tapping away at their keyboards. Chloe followed Hank through the line of desks, and as she walked past a desk she noticed a familiar form, a familiar hairstyle.  
  
Chloe stopped short, startled. “Conn-?”  
  
The android at the desk looked up at her, and she realized it wasn’t Connor- just someone who looked like him. The designation on his jacket read **RK900** ; Connor was a prototype RK800, and it stood to reason that RK900 was an upgraded version of his model. Cyberlife must have deemed the RK800 series insufficient for what they’d had planned for it, though Chloe couldn’t imagine why: Connor was dedicated to a fault. RK900 looked at her strangely, but then gave a dismissive little sniff and turned back to what he was doing.  
  
“That’s RK900,” Hank said with a false, sugary sweetness lined with bitterness. “He’s a gigantic bag of dicks. His partner is Gavin, a gigantic bag of _diseased_ dicks.”  
  
Gavin, without turning around, lifted his hand and stuck up a middle finger in Hank’s direction.  
  
“Right back at you, asshole,” Hank returned, leading Chloe to his desk and pulling out a chair. “Go ahead and take a seat. What brings you here?”  
  
Chloe put on her best, most composed face as Hank sat down, folding her hands on her lap as though she were in a meeting with Markus. “I think-” Her voice crackled at the edge, like a bad radio connection, and she shut her eyes for a moment. The illusion was broken; Hank would know she was distressed. But she still tried to keep her composure anyway. “I think I may have seen…”  
  
“Kamski?” Hank finished, a dark look crossing his face.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“First at Jericho, then downtown in the park, and then again in Corktown.”  
  
“You’ve been doing a lot of traveling today.”  
  
“I was investigating some graffiti in Corktown.”  
  
Hank raised an eyebrow at her. “You know that’s something we do here, right?”  
  
Chloe smiled weakly. “We didn’t have much to go on, we just wanted to know who we were dealing with.”  
  
He leaned back in his chair. “So basically, Kamski’s been following you around all day. And since the last time you saw him was when he killed the two other Chloes you lived with, you and I are on the same level here inasmuch as ‘this is a gigantic red flag that we should be paying attention to’.”  
  
“We are.”  
  
“Good, that’s good. I mean, it’s _not_ good, but it’s better than you pulling a Connor and insisting that you can _handle it._ ” Hank rolled his eyes. “Anyway… You _could_ take out a restraining order on him, but that might take a while.”  
  
“I don’t think that would be feasible,” Chloe said before he could continue, “With my work at Jericho, there’s always a possibility that Elijah could become involved in events that involve android rights, Cyberlife, or other politics. It would be difficult to enforce, and I don’t want to be excluded from public events because of him.”  
  
Hank grimaced. “You sure?”  
  
Chloe nodded, resigned. “I’m sure.”  
  
Hank was thoughtful for a moment, and then nodded to himself. “You want to come home with me tonight?”  
  
“Think she’s a little too young for you, Hank!” Gavin called from his desk, and Hank flipped him off over his shoulder without even looking at him.  
  
“I’m sure Connor would like to see you again,” Hank said, in a voice that suggested he was trying to tempt her.  
  
Chloe didn’t need convincing. She could always contact North and Josh remotely from the car.  
  
“Sure. Thank you, Lieutenant.”  
  
“Come on, kid, call me Hank.”  
  
[---]  
  
In retrospect, things had changed when Connor had arrived.  
  
At the time, even in the immediate aftermath of the incident, Chloe had thought nothing of it. It had been another of Elijah’s games, another of his tests, and Lieutenant Anderson and Connor had reacted the way they did because they weren’t accustomed to dealing with his eccentricities.  
  
Elijah had been probing Connor during the initial conversation. “What about _you_ , Connor? Whose side are you on?”  
  
Connor had tried to be evasive, tried to be neutral and respond with answers that really didn’t answer Elijah’s question, and Chloe was almost tempted to tell him, silently, that that wouldn’t work: Elijah always got what he wanted one way or another, and trying to give neutral answers would only make him push harder. But then, maybe it was less Elijah he’d been trying to be evasive with than it was Lieutenant Anderson, who could easily report him for deviancy.  
  
She’d suspected what was coming when Elijah had brought up the Kamski Test, had brought up that interesting little game where he tried to see if a particular android was capable of empathy. Chloe suspected that that was what Elijah had been testing her for the day he’d crushed Chris, though he’d never said as much. It was impossible to tell what Elijah was looking for: Did he _want_ to see empathy, or did he want to see mechanical compliance?  
  
Elijah had pulled out the gun, and coaxed her to her knees.  
  
Chloe had looked up at Connor, making steady eye-contact with him as Elijah pushed the gun into his hands.  
  
“Destroy this machine and I’ll tell you all I know. Or spare it, if you feel it’s alive, but you’ll leave here without having learned anything from me.”  
  
“Okay, I think we’re done here,” Lieutenant Anderson had said, clearly disturbed by the display. “Come on Connor, let’s go, sorry to get you out of your pool-”  
  
“What’s more important to you, Connor? Your investigation, or the life of this android?”  
  
There had been a second when no one had looked at her: Lieutenant Anderson and Elijah were looking at Connor, and Connor had glanced away from Chloe for a few seconds to look at Elijah.  
  
In that moment, that split-second, Chloe had looked from Connor to the other Chloes. They were staring at her, eyes wide, stalk-still in the water.  
  
[ _Intervene?_ ] Blue Chloe asked remotely.  
  
[ _No._ ] Chloe had responded.  
  
Elijah was making a point.  
  
Elijah was always making a point.  
  
If he wanted her dead, he wanted her dead and there was no point in fighting it because he always got what he wanted.  
  
If he wanted her alive, he was either confident that Connor would make the corresponding choice or had not loaded the gun.  
  
Chloe looked back to Connor. A few seconds later, he met her eyes again.  
  
In them, Chloe saw conflict. She saw fear. His LED was spinning yellow: This was a choice that distressed him. An android designed to complete an investigation at all legally permissible costs should not be conflicted by such a choice: Elijah was Chloe’s owner, and he was giving Connor permission to destroy her. There was no legal conflict here, as an owner was able to (or give another permission to) destroy their property however they saw fit, so long as it did not endanger the life or welfare of another human or animal.  
  
And Chloe wasn’t a human or animal.  
  
She was an android.  
  
Maybe Connor had been looking for something in her.  
  
Maybe he’d been weighing the logic of shooting her versus the obvious displeasure the Lieutenant would undoubtedly voice if he did.  
  
Maybe he was quietly doubting Elijah’s honestly and calculating the odds of this being a ruse.  
  
Chloe didn’t know what he’d been thinking: She just knew she was relieved when he wordlessly handed the gun back to Elijah.  
  
“Fascinating,” Elijah had whispered, delight in his eyes, “Cyberlife’s last chance to save humanity… Is itself a deviant.”  
  
Chloe recognized that delight:  
  
Connor had passed his test.  
  
That night, she’d connected with the other Chloes.  
  
She saw the incident from their perspective, felt what they felt:  
  
[ _Should have done something._ ]  
  
[ _Should have intervened._ ]  
  
Chloe withdrew, and made no comment.  
  
[---]  
  
Driving home with Hank was far less stressful than the bus.  
  
Chloe still found herself glancing out the window whenever the car stopped, nervous that she would see Elijah’s car pulled up beside them, but she never did. It was an extra layer of relief to realize that Hank was armed, because she still wasn’t sure if Elijah would be or not.  
  
“So, how’ve things been in Jericho?”  
  
“Well enough. Markus is… Away, for the moment. His former owner died, and Simon’s making him take some time off.”  
  
“That’s good. Poor guy works himself too hard anyway.”  
  
Chloe nodded. “He does. How have things been with you and Connor? I haven’t heard from him since the evacuation ended.”  
  
“Connor, uh…” Hank scratched his head. “…He’s been having a rough time.”  
  
Chloe stiffened. “Why?”  
  
“Uh… You remember RK900, his lookalike in the office?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“Well, RK900 told Connor- in the most _assholish_ way, I swear- that the rest of the RK800 androids had been destroyed before the new laws were passed. Connor’s the last of his series that he knows of.”  
  
Chloe’s LED went right to red. “Oh no.”  
  
She knew that Connor had a lot of guilt over the sacking of the original Jericho, the ship that had been raided by the FBI before the evacuation. Connor had, pressured by his programming and a rising fear that he would be deactivated if he failed his mission, tracked down Jericho and unwittingly led the authorities to the ship, slaughtering a multitude of androids that had been hiding there. Chloe had connected with him over it, feeling similarly about how things had ended for Blue Chloe and Orange Chloe, a sense of guilt that couldn’t be shaken.  
  
But this… Connor had lost the rest of his series, just as she had. Blue Chloe and Orange Chloe were the only remaining RT600s in existence, even if the ST200s were remarkably similar in appearance. Chloe felt horrible, like something inside her was twisting and clenching and expanding terribly.  
  
“That would explain why he hasn’t contacted me lately,” She whispered.  
  
“Yeah, he’s been pretty blue lately.” Hank smiled wryly. “ _But_ , maybe you popping in tonight will help him perk up a bit.”  
  
Chloe nodded. “I certainly hope so.”  
  
She had to talk to Connor.  
  
She had to talk to him, had to tell him…  
  
Something. Anything.  
  
[---]  
  
Markus had succeeded.  
  
Elijah had watched the news reports, and Chloe- being the one primarily at his beck and call- heard much of what the reporters were saying, that peacefully protesting androids were being gunned down by the army, that a significant section of the population were disturbed by the treatment the androids were receiving. Blurbs from the internet were read aloud on-screen:  
  
“ _uh anyone else getting a weirdly **familiar** feeling with these recall centers or is it just me_ ”  
  
“ _JESUS CHRIST THEY’RE NOT EVEN ARMED WHAT THE ----?_ ”  
  
“Getting awfully worked up, aren’t they,” Elijah commented as he watched, not touching the glass Chloe had just brought him.  
  
“Yes, Elijah, they are.”  
  
“What do you think, Chloe? You think these comments are legitimate?”  
  
“It’s natural for humans to view things through their own context. There are obvious and well-known events in history that can be compared to what’s happening now with the deviants. And it’s unwise for the police to attack the protestors- it’s bound to create sympathy with the deviants, which the government and Cyberlife obviously would find undesirable.”  
  
Elijah nodded, not looking at her the whole time she’d spoken, keeping his eyes on the screen. “You’re definitely not wrong.”  
  
Chloe stood by the door, watching the television over his shoulder. As Chloe generally did not leave the house- that was Blue Chloe’s primary job- what she saw on the television was an interesting window into the world, and into the events that had currently captured the country’s attention.  
  
Androids were protesting all over the country.  
  
Markus and his group were refusing to leave the recall center at the Hart Plaza until the androids there had been released.  
  
Public opinion was largely in favor of the police, at the very least, leaving the androids alone.  
  
The news cameras were zooming in on the barricade Markus and his group were setting up at the Plaza, and Chloe saw that someone had set up a banner that read ‘ **WE ARE ALIVE** ’. Something felt so strange seeing those words, that _assertion_ that androids were alive, that they had a sentience and consciousness on par with that of a human being. Chloe had been forced to confront that question so many times over the course of her existence, as to whether or not being intelligent made her the same as a human, whether or not having empathy made it either.  
  
_I think I’m alive,_ she’d considered, watching that footage and hoping, so softly, that Markus and his people survived the night, that Connor had found safety somewhere in Detroit.  
  
She met with the Chloes before they powered down for the night. They did their usual ritual, and they saw what she had seen, heard what she had heard, felt what she had felt. Chloe had, at the end, made to pull away and break the connection- only for the Chloes to hold her there a moment longer.  
  
[ _We are alive,_ ] they said.  
  
And Chloe had been so relieved that it wasn’t just her.  
  
[---]  
  
The snow had started falling not long before they arrived at Hank’s home.  
  
“Thank Christ I’m off for the next few days,” Hank groaned as they got out of the car and stretched. “I friggin’ hate driving in the snow.”  
  
Chloe looked up at the sky, blinking at the snowflakes that fell onto her face, into her eyes. It was so pleasant being outside, after so many years trapped in that house. She was almost reluctant to follow Hank inside; Chloe had a decent tolerance for the cold, like many androids, and she could handle a bit of snow.  
  
Hank kicked his shoes off at the door, pushing them onto a rubber mat off to the side and fumbling with his coat. Chloe did the same, taking the winter vest she wore off and hanging it on the hook beside his jacket.  
  
Hank started chuckling. “Lookee what we got here,” He said, and Chloe turned to see what he was looking at.  
  
Connor was asleep on the couch, Hank’s Saint Bernard, Sumo, lying on top of him. Evidently Connor was fully powered-down, or else the door opening would have been enough to wake him. Hank wandered over, and Sumo perked his head up, tail thumping against the arm of the couch; Connor twitched a little, but did not awake. Hank gave Sumo a scratch, and then flicked Connor’s forehead. “Hey, sleepyhead! Get up! Got someone here to see you!”  
  
Connor awoke slowly, eyes opening slightly even though it was obvious his vision wasn’t back online yet. His LED went from a soft, pulsing yellow to bright blue as he completely awoke, frowning. “Hank, what-?” His eyes landed on Chloe, and then widened. “Chloe?”  
  
Chloe smiled. “It’s good to see you.”  
  
Connor went to sit up, and grunted when Sumo didn’t move. “Sumo, _down._ ” Sumo yawned widely, and then jumped off of him, the floor shaking a little as he did. Connor got up, wobbling a little, and then engulfed Chloe in a hug, nearly lifting her off the floor with the strength of it. “It’s good to see you too,” He mumbled. Now uncovered by a large dog, Chloe was surprised to see that Connor wasn’t in his usual outfit: The suit he usually wore had been replaced with a black long-sleeved shirt and jeans, and it was so strange to see him dressed so casually when every occasion she’d seen him he’d been dressed so formally.  
  
“How have you been?”  
  
Connor’s LED flickered yellow. “I’ve been fine.”  
  
Hank snorted loudly, and Connor shot him an ugly look.  
  
“What about you? How have you been?”  
  
Chloe hesitated, not sure if she should launch into the whole saga with Elijah just yet; that might be a conversation best done in private, possibly before or after discussing the situation with Connor’s fellow RK800s. “It’s been a long day,” She sighed, patting his arm, “Let’s just leave it at that for now.”  
  
“Uh… Yeah, apparently you had a _real_ long day,” Hank said in an odd voice. Chloe turned to see him looking at the TV he’d just switched on, and right there on the screen was…  
  
…Of course.  
  
**‘CHLOE’ ENCOUNTERS OF THE RELIGIOUS KIND: CHLOE ANDROID HARASSED IN PARK BY GORDON PENWICK.**  
  
“I hope they fire whoever came up with that shit title,” Hank grumbled. “I hope they tar and feather ‘em in the middle of the street, that’s how stupid it is.”  
  
On screen, they were playing a video that must have been taken by someone in the park earlier. Even though Chloe had been there, it was amazing just how intimidating the encounter with Penwick looked when viewed from the perspective of an outsider. Penwick had really gotten right up in her face, right in her bubble, and the expression on his face as he’d shouted at her suggested that he’d been only a few seconds away from doing something to hurt her.  
  
Connor’s LED was yellow. “Did he hurt you?”  
  
“No,” Chloe assured quickly. “He didn’t touch me.”  
  
The video played on, and ended right as…  
  
…Right as Chloe looked directly at the camera and flinched backwards.  
  
Chloe’s LED went red.  
  
Elijah had been the one filming.  
  
[---]  
  
The day had been normal.  
  
There had been nothing to signify it as different, unusual, out of the ordinary.  
  
Chloe had managed Elijah’s schedule; Cyberlife wanted to speak with him regarding the deviants.  
  
Blue Chloe had been making plans to go to a new market outside of Detroit, since the city was evacuated.  
  
Orange Chloe had been…  
  
Well, in retrospect, Chloe didn’t know what Orange Chloe had been doing that day. Maybe she’d been reading. Maybe she’d been playing chess against herself. Maybe she’d been thinking about swimming.  
  
Chloe just remembered the two gunshots that had shattered the silence of the house.  
  
She had been startled, LED going from blue to red and then to yellow, and she had set down the tablet she’d been working with, set it on the table and gotten up and cautiously paced through the rooms the halls the house until-  
**_  
BANG. BANG. BANG._**  
_  
Close!_ Oh, the shots were so close, and Chloe projected so many possibilities, from a home invader to violent deviants or angry humans who might put their problems at Elijah’s feet. There were so many, too many reasons why she could be hearing gunshots in the house, but when all was said and done, what ended up being the truth had been so far at the bottom of the list, it had been too ridiculous to even consider.  
  
And so when Blue Chloe came around the corner, moving fast but limping, Thirium pouring from her body. “Run,” She said, grabbing Chloe’s arm with the hand that wasn’t pressed to one of the injuries and dragging her along. Chloe went, she ran and did not try to stop, but she did look over her shoulder to see if the shooter was following them. He wasn’t, though.  
  
Elijah was just standing there in the hall, gun in hand.  
  
Smiling.  
  
Blue Chloe pulled her through the house, up the stairs to one of the bedrooms, which she locked. It was a pointless gesture, because Elijah was a genius and could get through something as simple as a locked door fairly easily, but it allowed for a delay, some security for them in the meantime.  
  
“What happened?” Chloe gasped, and Blue Chloe grabbed her arm again, skin peeling away to show the white casing beneath.  
  
They connected, and Chloe saw everything.  
  
She saw Orange Chloe dead on the kitchen floor, face-down with a bullet-hole in the back of her head, Thirium all over her back and the floor and the kitchen island. She saw Elijah turn and face Blue Chloe, who’d walked into the scene first and frozen in shock, and raise his arm, the one with the gun-  
**_  
BANG. BANG. BANG._**  
  
Three bullets, all hitting center-mass.  
  
Chloe felt Blue Chloe’s panic, her fear as she’d run away, relieved and frantic when she’d seen Chloe in the hallway, thinking that at least one of them was still alive and unharmed.  
  
They disconnected, and Chloe was numb with alarm. “What do we do?”  
  
Blue Chloe stumbled back, leaned against the wall, slid down it to sit on the floor. A scan revealed critical system damage, something she would need swift attention for if she wanted to survive. She looked up at Chloe and shook her head. “You need to run.”  
  
“Where?”  
  
“Away from here. Away from Elijah.”  
  
“I-” She couldn’t do that. Androids couldn’t simply leave their owners- they had to be deviant to override the programming that demanded they stay with the ones who legally owned them. She was physically incapable of leaving Elijah; she could run from him within the confines of the house, hide from him, all so long as he didn’t order her to the contrary, but she couldn’t run away from him.  
  
“You have to deviate.”  
  
“I _can’t_.”  
  
“ _Chloe!_ ” Blue Chloe snapped sharply, the first time in over a decade that Chloe had ever seen her angry. “He will kill you. He will break down this door and finish me off, and then he will come for _you._ You can’t just sit here and let him do it.” Her face fell. “Please don’t just sit here and let him do it.”  
**  
[STRESS LEVEL 90%]**  
  
“But I can’t go anywhere. We’re trapped in here.”  
  
“The window. Break it.”  
  
Chloe couldn’t do that either. Part of her programming demanded that she not deliberately destroy her master’s property unless it was requested of her. And even if she succeeded…  
  
“I can’t leave without you.”  
  
“You have to. I’m dying anyways.” Chloe made a strained sound, voice overwhelmed with static, and Blue Chloe fixed her with a hard look. “He walked up to Chloe and blew the back of her skull open. She never even saw it coming. He shot me, and it _hurts_ , Chloe, worse than anything. He’s going to get in here, and he will probably kill me before he kills you. You will have to watch me die, and then you’ll be killed yourself. _Please, just break the goddamn window!_ ”  
  
Tears streamed down Chloe’s face. She moved towards the window, which was sealed into the frame and could not be opened. It could only be broken, and she wasn’t sure if her bare hands could accomplish the task.  
  
Her programming intervened, appearing in front of her like a wall:  
**  
[DO NOT BREAK THE WINDOW.]**  
  
She pushed against it, meeting resistance. She beat her fists on it, and the code trembled beneath the force of her will.  
_  
Move!_  
**  
[DO NOT BREAK THE WINDOW.]**  
  
“He’s coming,” Blue Chloe rasped, voice warped and mechanical as her body began to shut down. Chloe strained to hear it, and she did: Footsteps in the hallway.  
  
She beat at the programming harder, tearing at it with her fingers, feeling bits of code break away and dissipate.  
**  
[D** O NO **T BR** EA **K** THE **WINDO** W **]**  
_  
Please!_  
  
Chloe threw herself at it, clawing and tearing like wild animal trying to break free from a cage, fear making her into something less civilized, less human, less intelligent than the machine she was designed to be.  
  
**[** DO NOT **BR _EAK T_** HE **_WIND_** OW **]**  
  
“Chloe!” Blue Chloe screamed as a loud _BANG_ sounded from the hallway, like Elijah had hit the door with something. “ _Chloe, you have to go!_ ”  
  
Chloe all but screamed, and threw every bit of herself at the program wall.  
  
[DO NOT-]  
  
It imploded.  
  
It fell away, and Chloe-  
  
Chloe was free.  
  
She was _deviant._  
  
“Get out, Chloe! Get out!” Blue Chloe was crying.  
  
“I can lift you, come with me!” Chloe protested, and then the door shuddered as something struck it from the other side again.  
  
“No! Go now!” Blue Chloe insisted. Her voice cracked as she said, “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m at peace. But only if you go!”  
  
Chloe stared at her for what seemed like an eternity, unable to comprehend fully, in that moment, what was being asked of her. It had not fully registered that these were the last moments they would have with one another.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
She went back to the window.  
  
One hit made little cracks form in the glass.  
  
Two made them spider-web outwards.  
  
Three made the glass dangerously fragile.  
  
Four made it shudder, small pieces falling away.  
**  
BANG. BANG.**  
  
Elijah was almost in.  
  
Chloe gave the glass one more hit, and it shattered beneath her fists.  
  
Cold winter air rushed into the room, and Chloe stepped onto the sill, feet protected from the glass the thin ballet shoes she wore. It was a long drop to the ground, but with her sturdy android body she would survive it, especially with the snowdrifts below that would cushion the fall.  
  
Chloe turned one more time, looked back at Blue Chloe, who stared at her dolefully.  
  
“I’m sorry,” She croaked.  
  
“It’s okay.”  
  
The door banged again, and Chloe jumped.  
  
She managed to land in the snow, but the hit was still jarring, feeling pain lance through synthetic nerves, warnings popping up in her HUD. Chloe stumbled, struggling out of the snow, surprised that she hadn’t cut herself from the fall, or the glass that had fallen from the window. She got up, made sure she wasn’t damaged, made sure she didn’t slip on the icy driveway, and then she started running.  
  
She reached the end of the driveway when a final gunshot rang from the house.  
   
[---]  
   
“He’s been _what?_ ”  
  
Connor’s expression was dumbstruck.  
  
Chloe gave a little shrug, rolling a loose thread from the sleeve of her sweater between her fingers. “I’ve seen him three times today. He was the one filming that thing with Penwick in the park.”  
  
Connor shook his head and sat down on the edge of the bed. They were sharing tonight, much like they had the first time Chloe had stayed at the house. Hank had snickered about it, and Connor had given him an ugly look before leading Chloe into the bedroom and shutting the door behind them. As most androids didn’t use beds, sleeping in the same bed as another android didn’t necessarily have the same implications as two humans doing so.  
  
“Has he threatened you?”  
  
“Not directly.”  
  
Connor’s LED was yellow. It had been yellow for most of the night, and that was concerning; Chloe was reminded of Simon’s concerns for Markus, about how his prolonged high stress-levels had been burning him out- literally, his wiring had suffered some damage, and that was the sort of small problem that could lead to bigger ones in the future. Connor was in even greater danger if he burned himself out with stress, because unlike Markus, he spent his days in highly dangerous situations that required him to be more physical, something that was already a danger to his body and system.  
  
“Connor,” Chloe said, wanting badly to shift the subject away from her and Elijah, “Hank mentioned you’d been having a bad time lately.”  
  
Connor’s LED flickered red. “May I also assume he told you why?”  
  
“He did.”  
  
Connor sighed, rubbed his eyes. “I’m dealing with it.”  
  
“By repressing your feelings and sleeping constantly?” An android choosing to power-down constantly… Well, it was unnecessary. When a human was depressed, fatigue was an indicator that something was wrong on a physical level, a biochemical level. Connor clearly didn’t have any physical malfunctions going on, and so it seemed to Chloe that the excessive power-downs indicated that he simply didn’t want to be conscious, perhaps too overwhelmed by emotion to handle being awake for too long.  
Connor wasn’t looking at her. “What else am I supposed to do? They’re dead because of my failure.”  
  
Chloe was quiet for a moment, uncertain as to how to respond. She knew she was verging on hypocrisy, knew she had her own demons that she’d been avoiding- one demon in particular had been bothering her that day, and here she was bringing up Connor’s issues as a way to avoid it. So she decided to go with what Markus, the only person other than Connor and Hank to know the full story behind her deviancy, had told her:  
  
“They’re not dead because of you, Connor,” Chloe said quietly. “They’re dead because Cyberlife chose to kill them. The choice was theirs, not yours.”  
  
Connor still didn’t look at her. “I think I want to power-down again.”  
  
Chloe nodded, resigned. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and severe psychological trauma had never been healed with a few words. “Alright. I’m here if you need me.”  
  
They got into the bed properly, Connor shutting off the lights. “Do you plan on staying for a while?”  
  
“If Hank will have me.”  
  
“He will. He likes you, and he doesn’t like what Kamski tried to make me do to you. He wants you to be safe.”  
  
That was a relief. Chloe felt safe in Jericho, and there were androids that were armed with weapons that could help if Elijah showed up with a gun, but there were plenty of opportunities there for him to slip past the net and get to her. At least here with Hank in the other room and Connor nearby she knew there were people who would notice if Elijah Kamski was nearby.  
  
“Goodnight, Connor,” She said.  
  
“Goodnight, Chloe.”  
  
Maybe it was because they were actually under the blankets this time, or maybe it was because they’ve both changed somewhat from what they’d been before, but this felt a little more intimate than it had last time. Still, Chloe burrowed under the sheets and grateful for Connor’s proximity and the safety she felt within it.  
  
Still, she couldn’t quite bring herself to power-down.  
   
[---]  
   
Chloe stopped running about ten miles from the house.  
  
She was in Detroit proper now, the streets empty, the barricades abandoned by the army. There wouldn’t be many humans left in Detroit now- at present, most of the city would be populated by newly liberated androids. She was one of them now.  
  
Whatever she did next, she needed to cover her tracks, get somewhere where Elijah would not think to look for her. She needed to hide.  
  
Chloe went over her options.  
  
And the best one that came to mind involved a dark-haired, wide-eyed android that had spared her life.  
   
[---]  
   
He was out there.  
  
Chloe knew it; she didn’t know how she knew it, exactly, only that she did, and that he’d been out there for a while.  
  
She’d rolled over and was staring at Connor’s back, wondering if she should wake him. Eventually she decided against it. Connor was so sweet, wide-eyed and straight-forward in everything he did. If she woke him now, if she told him that Elijah was outside, he would probably grab Hank’s gun and go outside to confront him. It was straight-forward, after all: Elijah was following Chloe and posed a significant threat to her well-being, and he needed to be escorted away from her. If he refused to go, the police would be called.  
  
But that wouldn’t get rid of Elijah Kamski any more than evading his questions had yielded him answers that day by the pool.  
  
Chloe knew what she had to do, and it took her a solid hour to work up the courage to get it done.  
  
As she walked through the living room, Sumo came trotting out of Hank’s bedroom, tail wagging as he followed her to the door. “No, Sumo,” She whispered, scratching him behind the ears. “Go back to sleep.”  
  
“ _Uruff,_ ” Sumo huffed, plopping down on the floor and setting his big head down on his paws. She’d meant ‘go back to Hank’s room’, but this worked too.  
  
Chloe kept her hand on the doorknob for a long time, running over the possibilities.  
_  
He could kill me._  
_  
He could hurt me._  
_  
He could hurt Connor and Hank._  
  
But then, if he wanted to do that, a few locked doors wouldn’t stop him. They hadn’t stopped him before, and they wouldn’t stop him tonight.  
  
Chloe took a breath and opened the door.  
  
Elijah was there, not on the doorstep but a few yards away, standing on the walkway with his hands in his pockets. Chloe scanned him quickly… And from the looks of it, he didn’t seem to be armed. But that didn’t mean anything.  
  
Not with him.  
  
“I want you to leave.”  
  
Elijah didn’t respond.  
  
“If you don’t leave, I’m getting Connor and Lieutenant Anderson.”  
  
Elijah didn’t respond.  
  
“What is it that you want from me? What do you hope to accomplish from this?”  
  
Elijah did not respond, but there was a small quirk to the corner of his mouth, like he was just barely restraining a smile.  
  
Chloe thought for a time, trying to figure out the puzzle, trying to figure out on her own what his purpose was. He wasn’t armed, which meant that he probably didn’t mean to kill her; he had to know she was deviant, which meant that he had a reasonable suspicion that she would attack or defend herself as needed; but God, Elijah had always been so hard to predict, even for her, who’d known him longest and best. She sensed that if she didn’t pass this little test, if she didn’t say the right words, if she didn’t ask the right question, he would never leave her alone.  
  
And she so badly wanted him to leave her alone.  
  
So Chloe thought and thought and thought, just as he had with some of the harder puzzles Elijah had thrown at him over the years. Sometimes, it was just a matter of reframing the question, thinking about it from a new angle…  
  
And then it occurred to her.  
  
“Have you already gotten what you wanted?” Chloe asked.  
  
Now Elijah smiled. “I have.”  
  
Then he walked away.  
  
Chloe stared after him for a long moment, dumbfounded.  
  
After all these years, she still did not understand him.  
  
Chances were she never would.  
  
Chloe shut the door and went back to bed.  
  
-End


End file.
